“Don’t be. It’s hard, I get it, but it’s not happening tomorrow, she’s not leaving tomorrow,” I said. “And she loves you so much. She’s never going to leave you completely.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

He kept his forehead there, touching mine. “I just hope Bailey doesn’t wake up and find us gone,” he said. “If you look outside, you can see the Ritz.”

Little White Churches

Elenor H. McGovern peers at Bailey over her bifocals.

“So let me get this straight,” she says. “You want to know what?”

We are sitting in Elenor’s office at an Episcopal church. It’s a large church, one of the oldest cathedrals in Austin, more than a hundred years old. And just over a half mile from the football stadium. But most important, it is the only church we’ve walked into—the final of the six contenders—that Bailey said felt familiar to her.

“We are just looking for a list of weddings that were held here during the 2008 football season,” Bailey says.

Elenor, who is in her early seventies and pushing six feet tall, looks at us, overwhelmed.

“It’s less complicated than it sounds,” I say. “We actually just need a list of the weddings your pastor performed during the home games of the 2008 season. And we don’t need the weddings that fell on the other days of those weekends. Just the weddings that happened to actually take place during the Longhorns’ home games. That’s all.”

“Oh, during the home games from twelve years ago. Is that all?”

I ignore her tone and plow forward, hoping to turn her around. “I actually already did the legwork,” I say.

I nudge the list across the table toward her. I’ve created a chart with the Longhorns’ schedule from twelve years ago. I had Jules cross-check it at the San Francisco Chronicle, using their research tools, just to be sure that we didn’t miss any of the games, just to make sure we checked all the boxes.

There are only eight dates in question. There are only eight dates when a small Bailey could have been walking into the stadium with Owen, could have found herself sitting here.

Elenor stares at the list. But she doesn’t make a move to pick it up.

I look around the office, for clues about her—clues that may help me win her over. Christmas cards and bumper stickers cover her desk; photographs of Elenor’s family are lined up on the fireplace mantel; a large bulletin board is brimming over with photographs and notes from parishioners. The office reveals forty years of building relationships right in this room, in this church. She knows everything about this place. We just need to know one small piece of it.